About the author

Donn Risolo has been a soccer writer, editor and publicist since 1973. His new book, “Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats,” was released recently by the University of Nebraska Press.

"From conspiracy to controversy, this is a unique look at famous and not-so-famous incidents from world soccer. There's something here for all who love the game."

-- JP Dellacamera
World Cup and Olympic soccer commentator

"Risolo's Soccer Stories is precisely what it promises to be .... The author delivers it all in conversational, enthusiastic, and readable prose."

-- Benjamin D. Lisle
Journal of Sport History

"Fans will get a kick out of Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats. Read about highlights in soccer history from around the world, including Brazilian players paid in cattle, an African club that scored 149 goals against itself in one game, and more."

Juergen Klinsmann has agreed to a four-year contract extension that keeps him at the U.S. National Team helm through the next World Cup cycle and on until the end of 2018. As part of the agreement announced by the U.S. Soccer Federation, Klinsmann also becomes technical director.

Appointed U.S. coach in mid-2011 following the dismissal of Bob Bradley, Klinsmann guided an overhauled American squad to a 2014 World Cup berth. The U.S. finished first in the final round of the CONCACAF qualifiers (7-2-1) and went undefeated in winning the 2013 Gold Cup. The team ended the year 16-4-2 overall, setting single-year marks for wins, winning percentage (.761) and consecutive victories (12).

“One of the reasons we hired Juergen as our head coach was to advance the program, and we’ve seen the initial stages of that happening on the field and also off the field in various areas,” said U.S. Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati. “In the past two years he has built a strong foundation from the senior team down to the youth teams and we want to continue to build on that success.”

Klinsmann reportedly is being paid $2.5 million a year on his current contract and can earn up to $10.5 million in bonuses depending on the USA’s performance at Brasil ’14. [December 12]

Comment: The comfortable throne reserved for the U.S. National Team coach just got a little more plush.

Since the Bora Milutinovic era, when the rest of the world started to pay attention to the Americans, the post has been derided by the international media and fellow coaches (some of them wishful suitors) as a job with none of the intense scrutiny and relentless criticism that hounds most every other national team boss.

Said soon-to-be fired Mexico coach Ricardo LaVolpe of the overall U.S. National Team atmosphere after losing a World Cup qualifier to the Yanks in 2005: “Here, everyone’s interested in baseball and American football and many people didn’t even know that a soccer match was being played today. So it’s easy for them, because they aren’t playing under any pressure. My mother, my grandmother, or my great-grandmother could play in a team like that.”

We’ll assume that LaVolpe’s grandmother is Clint Dempsey and his great-grandmother is a good deal older, like Steve Cherundolo.

Then, more recently–last December–there was disgraced former France coach Raymond Domenech, who guided Les Bleus to the 2006 World Cup final and then watched his team mutiny and implode in a disgraceful three-and-out showing four years later.

“There’s a job I’d rather have,” Domenech said in an interview with But! Lyon. “Besides, I know [Klinsmann], he knows and he doesn’t care. This post is the coach of the United States. I’d like to see this country. Add to that, the Americans always qualify [for the World Cup]. At the same time, it is easy in North America: there are only two games to qualify for the World Cup. South America is already a paradise, but the North is even better! You play Canada, Mexico. You’ll walk in the Islands.”

We’ll never understand what Domenech meant by Canada, which is ranked 112th in the world and crashed in CONCACAF’s 2014 World Cup qualifiers two months before his comments. That aside, he made his point. Here, there is the lack of the breathless, relentless pressure that has made life miserable for everyone from Franz Beckenbauer to Michel Platini to Brazil’s once and future genius, Felipe “Big Phil” Scolari. And it hasn’t done much for Miguel Herrera, the last in a string of four Mexico coaches run through the grinder from September to November.

While the U.S. National Team is years away from having the support–and scrutiny–of a majority of the country, the resulting atmosphere has spared the USSF the temptation to make panicky dismissals of its coaches and allowed those coaches to go about their business.

In Klinsmann’s case, time to test a large number of players, make mistakes, and, ultimately, over time, alter the culture of the team. Then watch the results at a World Cup. Or, perhaps, a second World Cup.

Electronic Arts Inc. has announced that its FIFA Soccer 14 video game, set for release in North America on September 24, will for the first time feature all-time greats such as Pele, Ruud Gullit, Paolo Maldini, Marco van Basten and George Weah, as well as the Brazilian National Team. In all, the 2014 version will draw on 33 officially licensed leagues and more than 600 clubs and 16,000 players. Among the newcomers are the Argentine and Chilean first divisions.

The 2013 version of EA Sport’s FIFA Soccer video game sold 353,000 copies the day of its launch in the U.S. last September, a 42-percent increase from the 2012 edition. By January, EA reported that its FIFA Soccer 13 had sold 12 million units, up 23 percent from the same period for FIFA Soccer 12. [August 20]

Comment: It was called “The Simplest Game” during its beginnings as an organized sport in the 19th century, but it took high tech to lift soccer in this country to its current standing.

Without soccer news and league and club sites available via the worldwide web, American fans trying (and usually failing) to follow soccer would still be at the mercy of hidebound sports editors and sportscasters here who were indifferent or even hostile toward the game.

Without the cable TV explosion, American viewers would still be limited to the occasional match with Spanish language commentary–live or perhaps delayed by as many as two weeks.

Without social media, there would be no way for huge groups of fans to assemble, organize, and call themselves things like “American Outlaws” or “La Barra Brava.” Throwing a viewing party at the local soccer-friendly bar for a big match would be a word-of-mouth proposition.

EA’s soccer video game, introduced in 1993, has become a sensation among the U.S. college crowd–the kids who have played soccer, understand it and, after they graduate and somehow find gainful employment, can buy tickets behind a goal to support the local MLS club or, more likely, keep the local barkeep happy while cheering on televised heroes many time zones away.

But EA and their competitors are also converting the previously unconverted, the young adults who’ve never played soccer–or were turned off back when they tried. Soccer can be very, very off-putting to anyone who has never played it. The fitness required is daunting to the outsider, and the skills required are beyond daunting. So imagine the enormous gulf bridged when a college sophomore with two left feet but two healthy thumbs can control the destiny of Liverpool or AC Milan. Suddenly, electronically, while burning up at least two calories a minute, he’s in the middle of a high-profile match, surrounded by a passionate crowd, and–somewhat–in control.

The American youth soccer boom has been generating an increasing number of adult passengers since it got underway in the 1970s. Credit things like video games with picking up even the stragglers. If you live in a country with a true soccer culture, you can easily become a fan–even a rabid fan–without having to have played the game; in a country like the United States, you have to. Thanks to high tech, everyone, from the college’s star midfielder to the couch potato in the dorm room next door who can’t juggle a ball beyond one touch, can look you in the eye and say, “You kidding? Of course I play soccer.”